Master How You Spend Your Time with 10 Proven Time Management Hacks

This is a guest post by Will from WillYouLaugh.com. He studies business books and the most successful people in history and shares his best insights and tips to help others succeed too.

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If you’re into self-development, you know that there’s a million productivity articles on the web. What makes this any different? Well, from what I can tell, a lot of the guides out there often give the exact opposite advice from what you should do.

How do I know? Because I have seen it.

Having studied hundreds, if not thousands, of successful businessmen and businesswomen on my blog , I’ve had a solid foundation on what you should and shouldn’t do. It’s rather unfortunate when you see someone post an article on advice that is the exact opposite of what successful people actually say and people believe it.

An example would be: stop wasting time and money crafting a beautiful business card. Get customers and sales first -> Wrong advice: Buy business cards! You need them!

Today, I want to share with you a list of some incredible material that can actually help you in your life. This is based off highly acclaimed businessmen and business books like Rework by Jason Fried. The advice is useful to everyone even if you’re not in business.

The following infographic shows proven time management hacks that can help you get more done:

10 Proven Time Management Hacks

1. Stop being a perfectionist.

Good enough is good enough! Perfectionism often leads to paralysis and you never end up releasing your piece of art to the world. Let me remind you that you can always improve later on.

2. Use STSMV’s.

STSMV’s are short, time-sensitive measurable victories. Rather than having goals that take a year to finish, do something that will take a week or a day. A small win pumps you up to keep going and motivates you. A long goal drags on, makes you procrastinate, and shuts you down.

3. Communicate as concretely as possible.

There are plenty of examples of how simple sentences can be misunderstood. There’s a great book called Business Adventures where a chapter shows how one of these misunderstandings happening constantly leads to drastic problems in General Electric, which is one of the world’s largest companies.

4. Remove interruptions immediately.

Their distractions are longer than you think: it interrupts you from your flow-state, you have to address their issue, you have to reboot, it may take longer than you expect, it may lead you to other distractions, and eventually, you are brought back to your prior state but without the flow you once had.

5. Create world-class habits now.

Now, not tomorrow. The older you get, the harder it is to create awesome habits. And we are all creatures of habit. So start with just one or you will get overwhelmed. For the next week, set a goal to create one new habit. For me, it will be to write one new, awesome article that is different from all the other generic stuff out there PER WEEK.